The Samsung 850 EVO 4TB SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on July 11, 2016 10:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage and unlike our Iometer tests, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, a few data points about its latency, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The Destroyer isn't enough to really challenge the 4TB 850 EVO, as this test doesn't write enough data to fill the drive even halfway. The 1TB 850 Pro still holds the record for the highest average data rate maintained by a SATA drive, but the 4TB EVO is closer to that than to any slower drive.
After the 2TB 850 Pro and EVO managed to tie with the top tier of drives for average service time, it is a little disappointing to see the 4TB 850 EVO only manages to match the 1TB models, but that's still high-end performance.
The 4TB 850 EVO has slightly more extreme latency outliers than the 2TB 850s, but at the more strict threshold of 10ms it is tied with the 1TB 850 EVO for being the best TLC drive.
The 4TB 850 EVO brings a little more reduction in power use over the 2TB 850 EVO, which substantially cut power use relative to the 1TB model. The 4TB drive is clearly not paying any significant penalty for keeping so much flash and DRAM powered up.
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ddriver - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
That's a valid point, and even though majority of the people who buy consumer stuff are gonna use it on windows, it is still no excuse, it is not like samsung doesn't have the resources to dedicate to proper support.Palorim12 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
Linux is the only OS affected. Windows and Mac are fine. Disable Queued TRIM and Sequential TRIM will run. So NBD.Kevin G - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Samsung has horrible warranty support and they have had a few major issues with their SDDs (840 EVO performance degradation).Samus - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Yeah. I had two really sour back to back experiences with Samsung Storage support, one regarding the 840 EVO. After a month of back and fourth communication attempting different firmware updates as support requested, secure erase and reimage, and even trying the drive in another PC as support asked, it was obvious they were in denial of the well documented read performance problem. After RMA they shipped me back another 840 EVO that eventually (after a year) developed the same problems even with the latest firmware update. The problems always come up after a lot of writes like a game install. It wasn't worth the trouble. I would have been happy if they simply replaced the drive with an 850 EVO.Palorim12 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
The FW update that came out in April completely fixed the issue. I posted several updates on a 840 EVO and an 840 EVO m-sata on Overclock that are fine well over a year since the fix.Palorim12 - Tuesday, July 12, 2016 - link
And they also came out with a fix for the non-EVO 840 recently.Impulses - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Did they? That's news to me! To teh Google...Impulses - Wednesday, July 13, 2016 - link
Huh, go figure, they DID issue an 840 update towards the end of June (2016)... What the heck took so long? I think most people had rightfully assumed the 840 (non EVO) was abandoned, the EVO did come out like 6 months after it.Apparently the issue was also never quite as severe on the 840 non EVO? Did they ever commit to a fix and it got drowned out over time or did that update happen out of the blue? No AT Pipeline post about it either...
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Samsung-Magic...
Palorim12 - Thursday, July 14, 2016 - link
I think its because in most cases, it took longer for the issue to appear in the 840. So it would take longer for them to see if a fix fully worked?SetiroN - Monday, July 11, 2016 - link
Why wouldn't you?When you're talking TBs, that difference translates in HUNDREDS of dollars that I have better use for when Sandisk's performance is already good enough.
This drive only really makes sense in oddly demanding small laptops.